In this edition of Nimby Watch, we’re off to Herefordshire – or is it Gloucestershire? – where Nimbys and Yimbys are engaged in an old-school versus new-school war over housing targets…
Where are we off to this time, then? That’s actually a bit of a loaded question on this occasion. We’re off to the town of Ross-on-Wye and its environs, which is currently located in Herefordshire.
‘Currently’ seems an interesting word to include in that sentence. It does, doesn’t it? It’s there because there’s a proposal to change all of that: it’s been suggested that Ross-on-Wye could be ‘annexed’ into neighbouring Gloucestershire, as part of a ‘radical plan’.
I like the sound of ‘radical plan’. Well, this is Britain, so predictably enough it’s a radical plan to stop anything actually changing. Under Labour’s new housing targets, the Forest of Dean is going to need to find sites for 5,400 homes and one of the schemes it’s considering is an entirely new garden town between the A40 and the A48
There’s some merit to the new towns idea, isn’t there? It’s literally in no one’s back yard, it gets rid of stresses about existing local services and ‘garden town’ sounds quite idyllic, really? Yes, but inevitably people worry about pressure on access roads, the hassle of construction and a million other things. And so one council candidate is proposing outright annexation to try to stymie a new garden town as a solution to the housing fix.
So… he’s proposing annexing a neighbour as a solution over who gets to live where? You know who else did tha– I can see the joke you’re looking to make here, and absolutely not.
No, but it’s a funny World War II reference, you see, because… Nope, we’re not going there. Not every council boundary dispute has to be elevated to global conflict status, you know.
Spoilsport. So… what’re the chances of this actually happening? Probably close to zero, as I suspect the councillor concerned would admit, not least because it would need the consent of the people of Ross-on-Wye (or their elected representatives) and that seems fairly unlikely to be forthcoming. But it’s not the only thing that’s rumbling in the Forest of Dean.
Well, that’s intriguing. The changes to housing targets in some areas are no joke: for the Forest of Dean, the target has increased from 330 new homes a year to 597, meaning that by 2041, they need to build 12,000 homes, where previously it was only 6,600 – which they thought they’d found sites for.
So that’s why they’re looking into a new town? Exactly. But the councillors aren’t only considering annexation as a fix to their housing site woes – the council is also looking to artificial intelligence to fix its problems, trialling a contractor to use AI to assess the public responses to its different plans to find somewhere to put the extra 5,400 homes.
That’s good, because AI is extremely popular, uncontroversial and has been widely tested. No need to be sarcastic. We should, in Nimby Watch, be praising experimentation and innovation when it’s deployed in the spirit of getting more homes built. But given the love Britons have for mounting legal challenges to absolutely everything, it does feel like bringing AI into the process risks giving some group grounds to delay everything with some new form of judicial review or similar – which given our court backlogs could tie everything up for years.
So is Nimby Watch saying that AI is potentially a good thing, but shouldn’t be used in our metaphorical back yard? Okay, you’ve got me there. Someone has to go first with all of this stuff, and the Forest of Dean has their reasons to want some kind of omni-intelligence to help it balance competing demands – lots of residents simply don’t want more houses, whatever the targets say, while others want to make sure the new housing won’t be used by commuters. Some want a garden town, while some insist that’s the worst approach. Someone has to balance all of these competing demands, and it’s not hard to see why they hope a robot might help referee.
That makes sense. It’s worked brilliantly in football refereeing, after all. Har har har. I say we applaud their innovation, especially because they’ve said they’ll be cautious and abandon the AI if it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Plus, it’s got to be better than letting counties start annexing each other all the time, hasn’t it?
So… it’s annexation or automation, then, is it? I guess it is. Choose your adventure: is the future of planning Terminator, or War of the Roses?
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